The invention relates to a contact carriers.
Contact carriers are required in connection technology in order to receive contacts, preferably in plug connectors. Here, the contact carrier serves to receive contact elements such as electric, pneumatic or optical contacts.
The contact carrier has cavities, in which the contact elements are received and secured. The cavities are usually formed here as bores, which penetrate the contact carrier completely. On a side of the contact carrier referred to as the connection side, a conductor can thus be conductively connected to the contact element received in the cavity.
On the side opposite the connection side, referred to as the plugging side, the contact element received in the cavity is provided with a second contact carrier for contacting. The second contact carrier is preferably likewise received here in a plug connector, which can be connected to the plug connector of the first contact carrier.
Depending on the embodiment of the plug connector and of the contact carrier, it is also conceivable to arrange different types of contact elements in a contact carrier. By way of example, power and signal lines can be contacted and transferred simultaneously.
In a particular embodiment of contact carriers these are formed as modules. A plurality of these modules can be inserted, assembled together, into a plug connector. This embodiment eradicates the need to produce a special contact carrier for a plug connector for each particular application, and instead makes it possible to combine different modules having different contact elements with one another.
The present invention relates to a further embodiment of modular plug connectors of this type. In this particular type of modular plug connector, individual contact carriers (modules) are inserted into a frame and held together thereby. What is known as the module frame is received with inserted modules in a plug connector housing and thus forms the modular plug connector.